Cord Cutting Is Real: Pay TV Loses Subscribers For The Second Straight Quarter

Pay TV lost 119,000 subscribers in the third quarter of this year, SNL Kagan reports.

This is the second straight quarter of losses for the cable companies, satellite providers, and telcos. The previous quarter, providers lost 216,000 subscribers. The cable industry was particularly hard hit in Q3, losing 741,000 subscribers.

The loss in subscribers can no longer be merely chalked up to a bad economy, either. SNL Kagan analyst Ian Olgeirson says people are getting video from the web and other places.

From the SNL Kagan's release, Olgierson says (in analyst speak), "It is becoming increasingly difficult to dismiss the impact of over-the-top substitution on video subscriber performance, particularly after seeing declines during the period of the year that tends to produce the largest subscriber gains due to seasonal shifts back to television viewing and subscription packages."

We're going to be talking about this trend in detail our huge media conference, Ignition, which is on December 2-3. We'll have Hulu CEO Jason Kilar giving a keynote, and we'll be listening extra careful to get his take on the whole situatation.